Lorenzo Triburgo

Lorenzo Triburgo (b. 1980, Bronx, NY) is a Brooklyn-based, multimedia artist employing performance, photography, video, and audio to cast a critical lens on notions of the “natural,” the construct of gender, and the politics of queer representation.

Lorenzo has artworks in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, IL, and the Portland Art Museum in Portland, OR. Lorenzo has been featured in Slate, Huffington Post, HuffPo-Live, and the Transgender Studies Reader 2 edited by Susan Stryker and Aren Aizura (Routledge).

Lorenzo holds a BA from New York University in Photography and Gender Studies and an MFA in Photography and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts. Lorenzo teaches Critical Theory, Art, and Gender Studies for Oregon State University’s online campus and in the continuing education program at the School of Visual Arts.

Statement:

In my art practice I consistently confront the intersections of American identity, authenticity, and photography’s critical role in framing and constructing our understanding of reality. I exploit the language/connotations of traditional studio portraiture, historical landscape, and nostalgia to flip conventional power dynamics that exist between photographer, subject, and outside viewer.

In my recent and forthcoming projects, I explore a continuum of gender expression, rejecting the false dichotomy of “cisgender” and “transgender.” I employ my gender fluidity both in a temporal and relational sense, as an individual and as a member of a queer couple.

My current work-in-progress, Monumental Resistance: Stonewall, is a performance, photography, and timelapse video piece created during the 2018 NYC Pride Celebration in collaboration with my partner, Sarah Van Dyck. In 15-second increments, we created over 3,500 images between midnight Friday and midnight Saturday as I stood in place before the Stonewall National Monument, commonly regarded as the birthplace of the American LGBT Civil Rights Movement. With my visibly genderqueer body exposed to the waist, I stood as a tribute to the transgender women of color who catalyzed the Stonewall Uprising of 1969, yet have largely been excluded from the ensuing civil rights advances. This durational piece represents standing for something that which has been hard won, fought for, died for, cherished. In community with the thousands of queer people who visited Stonewall during Pride, I experienced and shared the remembrance, joy, and hope needed to continue resisting efforts by the current administration to roll back Federal-level civil rights protections for transgender Americans. The video and still images will be released in time for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in June 2019.